


We live with our sins

by wildechilde17



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU After Avengers Infinity War, Canon Compliant, Do not read if you wish to remain unspoiled for Age of Ultron, F/M, Post-Canon, This is what Joss forced me to do.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now to make everything that went before right, everything must be undone. The undoing is bloody. </p><p>In the distant future at the end of Avengers Infinity Wars 1 and 2, this is what Joss forced me to write.  Do not read if you wish to remain unsullied for Age of Ultron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We live with our sins

At the end of it all he sees Clint Barton looking more broken than he could ever imagine a man being and still taking in air. How could they have ever forgotten he was only human, running with them, pretending to be as unbreakable as they were? In the end it wasn't the bullets, the falls or the explosions that broke him, it was a family ripped from him, massacred by men who set themselves up as Gods and the little witch's attempts to repair it for him.

 

She couldn't bear his pain, too close to her own, so young, so full of the kind of passion that led her to Von Strucker in the first place. They continue to sow the seeds of their own destruction.

 

Clint Barton is not the only one asking if he sowed the seeds of his family's destruction. Their names will be tattooed on the souls of each who remains. Laura, Cooper, Lila and baby Nathaniel.

 

He does not want to be alone. Not again. Not now.

 

Natasha smells like gunfire and sweat but he imagines he can see something left of the woman he loved.

 

"I go with him," she says numbly when he holds her back with a simple plea, 'please.'

 

"I go with him," she says again of Barton, "He did not leave. I will not leave him now." Her green eyes are dull, her skin powdered with ash, her lips are blood stained.

 

"Natasha, I had to leave, it wasn't safe."

 

"But it was my choice," she says, ending any attempt at explanation. "You believed you knew better than my choice. You chose for me."

 

"You will go and try to fix him?" Maybe that was all this ever was, a saviour complex masquerading as love.

 

"No. I go with him and we will be broken together."

 

"Did he ask you to do that?"

 

"He has always allowed me to choose." A history they never speak of but that is written into their every move, they mirror each other, Barton and Natasha.

 

Perhaps he has never known her, this woman, elegant even in destruction, graceful even in pain.

 

"I am sorry."

 

"I cannot absolve you," she says and it is hollow and terrifying. "We live with our sins Doctor Banner, all of us.


End file.
